  Produced by Al Haines. [image] A flower shot down amid the crowd. Page Latter-Day Sweethearts By MRS. BURTON HARRISON Author of "A Bachelor Maid," "La Duchesse.—'L'amour est le flÉau du monde. Tous
Illustrated in Water-Colors by FRANK T. MERRILL A. S. & T. HUNTER NEW YORK AND LONDON COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY Entered at Stationers' Hall. Composition and Electrotyping by [image] (Facsimile Page of Manuscript from LATTER-DAY SWEETHEARTS) LATTER-DAY CHAPTER I In going aboard the "Baltic" that exceptionally fine October morning, Miss Carstairs convinced herself that, of the people assembled to see her off, no one could reasonably discern in her movement the suggestion of a retreat. The commonplace of a sailing for the other side would not, indeed, have met with the recognition of any attendance at the pier among her set, save for her hint that she might remain abroad a year. There had been a small rally on the part of a few friends who had chanced to meet at a dinner overnight, to go down to the White Star docks and say good-by to Helen Carstairs. Helen sincerely wished they had not come, both because the ceremony proved a little flat, and because, when she had time to think them over, she was not so sure they were her friends. But the main thing was that she had been able to withdraw, easily and naturally, from a doubly trying situation. She had not wanted to go abroad. All the novelty and sparkle had gone out of that business long ago. She knew foreign travel from A to Z, and she loathed tables d'hÔte, even more than the grim prospect of private meals with Miss Bleecker in sitting-rooms redolent of departed food, insufficiently atoned for by an encircling wilderness of gilding and red plush. The very thought of a concierge with brass buttons lifting his cap to her every time she crossed the hall, of hotel corridors decked with strange foot gear upon which unmade bedrooms yawned, of cabs and galleries and harpy dressmakers, of sights and fellow tourists, gave her a mental qualm. But it was better than staying at home this winter in the big house in Fifth Avenue where Mr. Carstairs had just brought a stepmother for her, in the person of "that Mrs. Coxe." There was apparently no valid reason for Helen's shuddering antipathy to the lady, who had been the widow of a junior partner of her father, a man whom Mr. Carstairs had "made," like many another beginning in his employ. Mr. Coxe had died two years before, of nervous overstrain, leaving this flamboyantly handsome, youngish woman to profit by his gains. Helen had always disliked having to ask the Coxes to dinner when her father's fiat compelled her to preside over the dull banquets of certain smartly-dressed women and weary, driven men, whom he assembled at intervals around his board. She could not say what she objected to in Mrs. Coxe; she thought it might be her giggle and her double chin. It had been always a relief when one of these "business" dinners was over, and she knew she would not have to do it soon again. When Mr. Carstairs dined in return with the Coxes, they had him at some fashionable restaurant, taking him afterward to the play. Mrs. Coxe had shown sense enough for that! During the interregnum of Mrs. Coxe's mourning following the demise of her exhausted lord, Mr. Carstairs had had the yacht meet Helen and himself at Gibraltar, and cruised all that winter in the Mediterranean. That had been life abroad, Helen thought, with a throb of yearning! She was very fond of her father, rather a stony image to most people, and immensely proud of the way people looked up to his achievements in the Street, the resistless rush of his business combinations, his massive wealth, and his perfect imperturbability to newspaper cavil and attacks by enemies. She had loved to be at the head of his establishment, and to receive the clever and distinguished and notable people, foreign and domestic, who accepted Mr. Carstairs' invitation to meet one another, because they were clever and distinguished and notable, not because they wanted to talk all the evening what they had talked all day. When they had come home from their cruise, Helen spent the summer in Newport, where her father rarely went. The yacht was his summer home, he was wont to say; and Helen did not suspect how often that season the noble "Sans Peur" had been anchored off the shores of a settlement in Long Island where Mrs. Coxe was enjoying the seclusion of a shingled villa with broad verandas set in a pocket handkerchief of lawn. Back and forth flew the owner's steam launch between the "Sans Peur" and the landing, and yet nobody told Helen. That autumn she had affairs of her own to absorb her time and give her a sobering view of humanity. For the first time in her life her father had vacated his throne as masculine ruler of her thoughts. She had passed into the grip of a strong, real passion for a man "nobody" knew. That is to say, John Glynn was too hard at work to let himself be found out. Helen had indulged in her affair with him almost unknown to her acquaintances, most of whom regarded the foot of the ladder of wealth, where he distinctly stood, as the one spot where dalliance in sentiment was to be shunned. Her movements were hampered by the fact that, although the daughter of a plutocrat, she had only a trifle of her own; Mr. Carstairs having announced, with the insolent eccentricity of some men of his stripe, that she should go dowerless to her husband, hoping thus to protect her from fortune-seekers, foreign and native. So long as she remained unmarried under his roof she was to enjoy great wealth and the importance it confers. Until now Helen had not cared. Her brain was clear, her head was cool, she had tastes and occupations that filled every hour, and plenty of people who flocked around her, paying court to the dispenser of liberal hospitalities. Her love passage had ended in disaster, but exactly what had passed between her and the unknown Glynn, no one was sufficiently intimate with Helen to ascertain. The marriage of her father with Mrs. Coxe had taken place in June, after which Mr. Carstairs had withdrawn his apparent objections to Newport, and blossomed out there as a villa resident of supreme importance. The months of this but partially successful experiment on the part of the new Mrs. Carstairs had been passed by Helen in suppressed misery. She had gone into camp in the Adirondacks, had visited friends at Dark Harbor, and welcomed with thankfulness the invitation to spend September with a young couple of her acquaintance who had a house at Lenox, filled, with the exception of one spare room, with assorted dogs. Early in October her father, visibly inspired by the lady who no longer giggled in Helen's presence, but had not lost her double chin, gave his recalcitrant daughter "a good talking to." If she persisted in her rebellious demeanor towards her stepmother, the more reprehensible because reserved, she was at liberty to do one of two things, viz., take a furnished house in town and engage Miss Bleecker, or somebody, to be her chaperon; or else go where she liked, abroad. Choosing the latter alternative, Helen had been considered fortunate in securing for her companion the lady in question, who was certified by her believers to be rarely disengaged. Miss Bleecker, in earlier days, had given readings in New York drawing-rooms and elsewhere about the country, until the gradual fading away of audiences had turned her thoughts into the present more lucrative and less fatiguing channel of genteelest occupation. Nature had gifted her with an ephemerally imposing presence, large, cold, projecting eyes, an authoritative voice and an excellent knowledge of the art of dress. It was familiarly said that to see her come into a room was a lesson to any girl; and her acquaintance with the ins and outs of New York society and fond pride in the display of it, put the dull lady beyond criticism as a general conversationalist. The two travellers were attended by a French maid, closely modelled in exterior upon previous employers of rank abroad, whose service she had relinquished for the higher wage resulting from her American decadence in social standing. Her large wad of suspiciously golden hair, frizzed over the eyebrows, was a souvenir of a "Lady Reggie"; while the flat waist, girdled low upon the hips of a portly person, was her best tribute to the slim young Princess Bartolozzi who had had her two years in Rome. This composite rendering of great ladies did not rob Mademoiselle Eulalie of the coarse modelling of her features; but, on the other hand, as Miss Bleecker said, she was safe from couriers, and her packing was a dream. When Helen went to the cabin de luxe secured by her father's secretary, into which Miss Bleecker's room opened, she felt impatient with the girls who followed her, exclaiming approvingly over its comforts; with the maid who stood sentinel by her gold-fitted dressing-case; with Miss Bleecker, who, in colloquy with a white-capped stewardess, was already laying down the law as to their requirements on the voyage. She hurried out again, encompassed by her friends, to gain the upper deck, where the men of the visiting party, looking unanimously bored, awaited anxiously the ringing of the last gong that should drive them from the ship. All had been said that could be said on either side. Vague repetitions had set in. Helen's eyes roved eagerly over the crowds on the pier below, over the congested gangway. She was hoping to see her father, and—perhaps, but improbably—one other. Late in the fray a brougham rattled along the pier and drew up below. Helen recognized her father's big brown horse and his steady coachman in sober livery, the down-town outfit of the financier, who, below Fourteenth Street, was simplicity itself. Mr. Carstairs, with a preoccupied air, got out and ascended the gangway. The official in charge at the top of it, who would have barred the way to a lesser man, smiled and waved the magnate into his daughter's embraces. Everything insensibly yielded to the subtle power of this ruler of the destinies of men. Helen, as she drew out of the lax clasp of the paternal arm, felt a thrill of her old pride in him; a sense of despair that she was nevermore to be his chosen companion for a voyage; a sharp pang of resentment at the image of the absent interloper of their peace. "It was too good of you to find time to come, papa!" she exclaimed, turning to nod to the secretary who accompanied him. "Who knows when we shall be together again!" "Yes, there is a board of directors waiting for me now," said Mr. Carstairs abstractedly. "Of course, you will be all right, my dear. Foster has seen to everything, and Miss Bleecker will—ah. Miss Bleecker, here you are; glad to see you looking so fit for the voyage. Nothing to speak of, though, a crossing in this monster. Wish I were getting away myself. I'm off now, Helen, my dear. Wish you good luck and a good time generally!" "It won't be with you and the 'Sans Peur,' father," exclaimed the girl, with filling eyes. "Well, well, we did get along pretty well last cruise, didn't we? I was to tell you," he added, lowering his tone, "that if you are in the humor for it, in the Spring—in the humor, mind you, we'll be out, probably in March, and take you and Miss Bleecker on at Villefranche, or anywhere you like." "Thank you, sir," said Helen, rigid in a moment, her eyes dried of moisture. "Think it over, my dear! You'll find it better worth while." He kissed her again on the side of the cheek, missing her lips somehow, and was gone. Helen hardly saw his spare figure in the topcoat that seemed too large for it, so quickly the crowd closed behind him. She was conscious of impatience with Foster, who stood there bowing in his sleek importance as the millionaire's confidential man, extending his dampish fingers for good-by. The party who had come to see her off sprinkled their final farewells with a few banal last remarks and disappeared. Miss Bleecker, serenely proud, took her station by the taffrail in a place where no acquaintance or reporter could fail to note her among the "well-known people sailing this morning." Helen was at last alone. Alone as she had never felt before, in her five-and-twenty years of active, independent life. A gap in the double row of passengers crowding to the rail forward gave her an opportunity. Slipping in, she looked down upon upturned, ivory-tinted faces massed together like those on a Chinese screen; at the windows of the company's rooms, also crowded with gazers, but saw nobody she knew. Already the mighty ship began to stir in her water-bed. When she ceased motion again, Helen would be over three thousand miles from home, and the memories of this last trying year. It seemed to her there was not one soul ashore to care whether she went or stayed. Was this worth living for, even as she had lived? A voice smote upon her ear. It issued from a girl jammed in next to her—a girl younger than herself, extremely pretty, flashily attired, recklessly unconventional. Hers was what Helen recognized to be a Southern voice, low of pitch and soft of cadence, but just now strained to the utmost to make itself audible to a young man in the act of forcing his way through the resistant crowd, to reach the edge of the outer pier from which the ship was now swinging off. To further accentuate her presence among the departing, the young lady was waving a small American flag. "Jo-oh-n! Oh! Mr. Glynn! Look up! Here I am! Up here!" Helen started electrically, for it was her John Glynn, and none other, whom this unknown person was thus shamelessly appropriating! He, whom she had been yearning to catch a glimpse of, who she was convinced must know from the papers that she was sailing by this steamer. He, who she had felt sure was in some hidden corner looking after her, although, by her behest, they might not again hold speech one with the other! "Got here only this minute. Best I could do!" shouted John Glynn back to the stranger, a smile lighting his handsome, manly face. "Never mind! I understand! Good-by!" A flower shot down amid the crowd. Several men affected to jump for it, but John Glynn caught it and put it in his coat. His gaze never left Helen's neighbor; to her his eyes were upturned, his hat was waved. In a flash, Miss Carstairs had drawn out of sight and fled within. She found Miss Bleecker already extended upon the couch in her own stateroom, taking tea, the door opened between, whilst Eulalie, kneeling before steamer trunks and bags, was littering everything near-by with luxurious belongings. Helen accepted a cup of tea, changed her street costume for a long, close-fitting brown ulster with a sable toque and boa, in which Eulalie told her she was parfaitement bien mise; and, escaping again to the deck, walked up and down a comparatively clear space until the "Baltic" was well down the bay. Then, fairly tired, but unwilling to face Miss Bleecker's chatter, she found a chair forward, where it was not likely she would sit again during the voyage, and with a wisp of brown chiffon drawn close over her face, abandoned herself to melancholy thought. So this was the end of John Glynn's lamenting for her loss! She, not he, had been faithful to the love they had shared so fondly for a little while, in which she had no longer dared indulge with him. This was the way he had accepted her decision that they must try to forget each other, finally. During the one week of their secret engagement she had felt immeasurable happiness. But every moment of closer, contact with her young love, a boy in world's knowledge beside herself, though of her own age in actual years, convinced her of the fatal mistake she had made in believing she could give up her present life for him, and clog his career by an early marriage. So she had broken the bond ruthlessly, and her father had never known of its existence. And his consolation so quickly found! Helen's lip curled disdainfully. Some girl he had met in his boarding-house; the kind of thing he had been accustomed to before Miss Carstairs treated her jaded taste to his virile freshness and charming looks, his masterful reliance upon himself, his willingness to take her, poor or rich! The type of girl she had seen in the tumultuous moment beside the rail was puzzling. Not a lady, according to her artificialized standard, but having the frank assurance and belief in herself that had attracted Helen to John Glynn, with a something of good breeding underneath. Cheaply dressed, cheap mannered, perhaps, ignorant of what Miss Carstairs considered elemental necessities of training, but never vulgar. But whatever the rival, the hurt was that Glynn cared for Helen no more, while she cared just the same. What a fool she had been to believe that masculine fidelity survives the blows of fate! Masked in her brown veil, Helen sat in her corner, turning this bitter morsel upon her tongue, her eyes vaguely resting upon the passing show of passengers as they came straying up on deck to make the best of a fine afternoon while getting out to sea. Impatiently casting aside her unwelcome thoughts, she tried to interest herself in these people, to speculate upon their identity, purpose, and personality, with the usual rather poor returns, since a ship's company assembled at first view has always the most depressing influence upon the looker-on. Beside her, upon one of the rare seats of a liner that belong to nobody, she espied a shabby little man, in an overcoat like a faded leaf, drop down furtively, then seeing no one inclined to disturb him, relax his muscles and, taking off an ancient, wide-brimmed felt hat, look about him with a beaming smile, prepared for full enjoyment of the hour and scene. Something in the artless buoyancy of his manner, his meek acceptance of a modest place in life, his indifference to the considerations that oftenest vexed the souls of Miss Carstairs' acquaintances upon making any sort of public appearance before their fellow-beings, struck her with an approach to approval. Her glance toward him was met in the same spirit of prompt return that follows patting upon the head a friendly dog. "Beautiful weather we're having to go out in, ma'am," he said. "I'm kind of glad to settle down in this quiet corner 'n see the last o' my native land. I reckoned I was in no one's way occupying this little bench a bit. Because, you see, I've walked and walked, inspecting the White Star leviathan, everywhere they'd let me set a foot, till I'm about worn out. Talk about 'seeing New York City'! It's not a patch on this ship for making a man feel his lower limbs, if you'll excuse the expression before a lady. Why, she's a wonder, ma'am, a marvel, and there's literally no end to her. I find myself saying at intervals, 'Thank God, I've lived to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and what's more, to cross it in a floating Waldorf-Astoria,' for so it looks to me!" "You are fond of the water, then?" said Helen, surprised at her own affability, but on the whole too wretched to care for risks. "Well, ma'am, I've, so to say, some little experience. I resided formerly in Norfolk, Virginia, and went round to Baltimo, Maryland, on several trips by sea. Know Baltimo, ma'am? Can't exactly compare it to New York, I reckon, but still it's a fine city. Celebrated for its monuments, canvasbacks, and pretty girls, the saying used to be. Worn't dead stuck on canvasbacks myself, though; got overfed with them on my father's plantation when I was a lad, preferred bacon and greens any day in the year. But I'll give in to the praise of Baltimo women to my last breath. Married one of 'em, in fact, an' if God ever sent an angel into a man's life, 'twas she." Miss Carstairs, to her surprise, detected simultaneously with a tender adoring look coming upon his withered face, a suspicion of moisture in her interlocutor's eyes. She sat up, felt that here was something so out of the way as to verge upon impropriety, made a movement to depart, and finally concluded to remain where she was. "Yes, ma'am, she was too good for me, or any man. Born among the best, as the saying is, and I, one of the small potatoes in the heap. 'Tisn't any wonder I should be thinking of her to-day, the way she wanted all her life to go to Europe and never dreamed of managing to get there." "I hope this thought won't spoil your own pleasure in the journey," Helen said, embarrassed to find an answer. "Oh! no, ma'am, no chance of that. Why, she's been with me in spirit ever since we parted, ten years ago, an' I always feel as if she was sharing things. She'd need a good deal to make up to her for the hardships she had with me. You see, I was first leftenant of infantry, just come out o' the war, 'n 'bout as bare o' money as when I came into the world, I reckon, when I met her first off in Baltimo, where I was lookin' for a job. I was bred up as a drug clerk, and so was glad to take a place in a poor little store, 'n we began life together in one room of a boarding-house, 'n a hall bedroom at that! She, mind you, was a general's daughter of the real old Maryland first chop stock, but as poor as me. After her father was killed at Gettysburg, you see, her mother went to pickling for a living, 'n 'twas hard work, with two other daughters on her hands, neither one o' them likely to marry much, being the kind the Lord makes homely for reasons of His own. My wife, now, was a beauty, no mistaking her! I never understood how she came to take up with me, 'n when I asked her why, she said she was just tired o' pickles, anyway! That was only her fun, ma'am; we had to have a little, to make the wheels go round. Please excuse me for taking the liberty of talking so sociably. We Southerners have that way, I reckon, and, besides, it seemed like my heart was so full of wife to-day, I had to say something to somebody, or break a trace." Miss Carstairs hesitated, then gave way to an unusual impulse, arising as she spoke. "I must thank you, rather, for having reminded me that all men don't forget. I am sure you deserved all the happiness you had with her, and I hope there is a great deal of it still left in life for you." "Well, now, ma'am, that's beautifully said. But I won't let you go without knowing that, though I've come to it by a long, hard way, my luck has turned at last, and the only trouble is that she's not here to share it. The long years after we moved south to Alabama (where I'd an opening, and after a while set up for myself), when wife toiled and moiled for me—when we lost all the children that were born to us, but the last one—how she used to sit in the evenings and read about English cathedrals and Stonehenge, and the like! She didn't seem to care so much about visiting Italy and Paris and the Riviera, but Switzerland tickled her awfully. She had a picture of Mont Blanc on top of a work-box. When I think how cheap the post cards are in these days, I do wish wife could have had a lot to paste in an album that she kept. She always said I was to take daughter, if we ever got money enough for two to cross on, and that she would stay at home. And now, the money's come, enough for all of us, and I'm taking daughter, just as she said, and we're to see England and she isn't! I tell you, ma'am, things are sorted out unevenly by our good Lord!" Miss Carstairs carried into her cabin the wistfulness of the gentle old face, the irresistible conviction of his honesty. What, in the beginning, had tempted her to mock, now laid forcible hold of her better nature, and impelled her to gentler thoughts. A sharp awakening was the rencounter with Miss Bleecker's apprehensions as to where she should sit at table, and the effervescence of that lady's regrets that the parties with whom she had counted upon being included, were all "made up." Helen recalled previous voyages under the Ægis of her distinguished father, where their table was the one most desired by social pretenders, with its plats and wines served from his private stores, its aura of plutocratic exclusiveness in which revolved obsequious stewards! She winced at thought of glory fled, but while Miss Bleecker enlarged upon the neglect of the secretary, Foster, in not having arranged this matter for them, reflected bitterly that Foster, trimming his sails to the wind of Fortune, was now the devotÉe of the new Mrs. Carstairs' whims, and unless especially ordered so to do, would be likely to make no effort for the rebellious stepdaughter's advancement. Affecting indifference to the detail in question, she found herself at dinner assigned to a small table in one corner of the saloon, of which five of the nine seats were already filled, when Miss Bleecker, sparkling intermittently in jet, sailed ahead of her charge, and motioned Helen into place beside her. A steward, who had identified the ladies, came hurrying to overtake them, and express his hope that Miss Carstairs would be satisfied with his selection for her, assuring her, in a whisper, that he had taken every care that she should have only the "best" people as her comrades. Helen, who had not yet sat down, smiled at the reassuring promise. The whisper, overheard by two of the gentlemen unfolding their napkins opposite, produced an answering smile. Impossible to resist a voucher so bestowed! Simultaneously the two men arose and stood till Miss Carstairs had taken her revolving chair and was safely installed beside her chaperon. The table was now complete, save for the seat at the end and that at its right adjoining Helen's. Soup had hardly been placed before them when the intended occupants of the vacant places resolved themselves into a couple, at sight of whom a cold tremor passed into Miss Carstairs' limbs—for they were none other than the mild little man with whom she had been talking on the deck, and the girl who had thrown John Glynn a flower! The old fellow had made scant preparation for the ceremonial meal of the day on shipboard. His kind face shone with soap and water, while a thin lock of gray hair was laboriously trained by the same medium over his bald crown. His mustard-colored "tourist suit" of tweed, the red tie and rumpled cheviot shirt, might, indeed, have served a noble earl upon his travels through an American drawing-room; but whatever the appearance of her sire, it was at once lost to sight in the radiant prettiness and extraordinary self-possession of the girl who accompanied him. A goddess of liberty in height, with the complexion of a pink-and-white balsam flower, and rippled hair of gold worn parted in the middle and extending outward in exaggerated wings; her admirable young form was attired in cheap China silk of an azure tint incorporating transparencies of white lace that revealed a dazzling neck and arms. Decked with profuse jewelry of the inexpensive sort, she stood for a moment where the rest of the company could fully profit by the apparition before it went into eclipse in her allotted seat! The attention of their table, hitherto indirectly converging upon the fine lines and pÂte tendre coloring of Miss Carstairs, now shifted its focus to a point not to be forsaken for the remainder of the voyage (an example promptly to be followed by the rest of the passengers, the officers and personnel of the big ship in general). The newcomer possessed, in spite of her extreme youth, the manner of some histrionic star who has the conscience of her calling in producing effects not to be forfeited by a moment's neglect of opportunity. Her present entrance had the full effect of a sweep down to the footlights, to pause with one hand upon the desk from which the heroine is wont to dash off her little notes to the leading man, whilst reading them aloud to the audience. But withal, so childlike were her contours, so joyous her appeal for notice, one felt that her vanity might still be the innocent belief of a little girl secure of her own interestingness to the public, when she comes into a roomful of her mother's guests. All eyes following her movements, the stranger surveyed the saloon briefly, and spoke to her companion with good-humored authority. "Just what I told you, Dad. The older gentlemen all sit in the end seats, and that's the place for you." "Now, Posey, child," came in audible rejoinder, "none of your nonsense, but just do as I said, and take the end yourself. Nobody wants to see an old fossil like me put forward when they can get a nice young lady to look at. Sit down, right away, and I'll just slip in beside this lady. Why, ma'am," he added, interrupting himself with a face of glad recognition in identifying Miss Carstairs, "if it ain't you, and I'm real pleased to meet up with you again! A needle in a haystack, I was thinking myself among all these strange folk. And you'll be such prime company for Posey, here. Let me make you acquainted with my daughter, Miss Pamela Winstanley, of Alison's Cross Roads, Alabama." Miss Carstairs inclined her head toward the beaming newcomer, and almost immediately turned to close converse in an undertone with Miss Bleecker, who was herself occupied in digesting unpleasant first impressions. For, after fortifying herself with soup, and ordering a whiskey and soda for digestion's sake, the chaperon had sent her eagle glance around the board with this result: Of the five gentlemen installed before their arrival, two were mentally labelled, "Hopeless, old, grumpy, no doubt, of no possible use to us." Another, "A mere larky boy, not knowing him, must keep him down," and the pair who had arisen and stood at their approach, "An Englishman, badly bored, good figure, eyes and teeth, has been, or is, in the army; the Frenchman with him, rather like Mephistopheles, might be amusing, but will, of course, be sea-sick all the way over. A poor lot, and just wait till I get at that head steward and find out what he means by it!" CHAPTER II "My dear Helen, I really may as well tell you at once, that I don't like your walking alone, in the dark, down on that lower deck that looks steeragy, where there are no chairs, and the men go to smoke after dinner." "Do they? I hadn't noticed," said Helen, indifferently. She had come into their rooms with a brighter look upon her face, born of the delicious swoop of salt air upon it, and the sound of that churning music of the waves with which the sea rewards the good ship when she takes her ocean crests easily and settles down to her grand Atlantic stride. "I lost you, after dinner, when I was sitting on the boat deck with Mrs. Vereker, hearing all about her daughter's divorce and her son's appendicitis. No wonder the poor woman goes abroad for a change. And, really, I'm glad, after all, we are not with them at table, since she can talk of nothing else, and much as one may feel for a friend's troubles, it is nicer to hear a little about other people's, too! I was telling Mrs. Vereker—though, dear me, she hardly lets one speak—how dreadfully they had served us about the people they put us with, and, my dear, what do you think? It never does to judge by first appearances at sea, for as it turns out, Mr. Vereker—who is that kind of a fussing, Miss Nancyish man, and loves to study the passenger list—has discovered that every soul at our table, except those dreadful Southerners, has a title! The one with glasses, who speaks such funny English, is a German Graf, of a family of fabulous antiquity, who has been to Washington to see his ambassador about sending one of his sons to learn agriculture in America. The one who gobbles so, and complains of the draught on his back, and had the port shut, is Prince Zourikoff, a Russian savant, who has written a book called 'Études sur la cause de la dÉcadence des peuples.' The saucy boy who went in for a flirtation with that Winstanley girl, is Mr. Vane, a son of Lord Kennington, whom they sent to Canada for a year to get him out of mischief at home. The really interesting person is—who do you suppose?—the man opposite you, Lord Clandonald, whose story was in all the newspapers a year ago. His wife, a beautiful Miss Darien, behaved scandalously, yet was so clever in tricking everybody, it was hard to get the divorce. But he got rid of her at last, and then went around the world. Doesn't look like a man of that sort, does he? Rather shy, I should say, and hold-off, but a splendid figure. The Frenchman is actually the famous Mariol, whose books are my delight, though he's a wretch the way he writes about women. He's Clandonald's great chum, and they have been travelling together." Helen's face had lighted. "I know only one or two books of Mariol's—essays principally, but they are perfect of their kind——" "I advise you to keep to the essays," said Miss Bleecker, dryly. "He has an enormous reputation in the literary world, and one likes to meet them, now and again, if they are not frumps." "And provided he is not sea-sick," said Helen, smiling. "In this boat, in an ordinary sea, there'll be no excuse for it. Why, one hardly knows we are moving. To return to Clandonald, don't you think people one reads about and hears about are always disappointing? I don't say there was anything wrong attributed to him; they said he was rather Quixotic in his treatment of the worthless creature, who had to give up his name and go under. But he is so much like other people. Nothing to show he was in such a notorious divorce suit—Helen, what are you smiling at?" "The thrilling thought that I had M. de Mariol to mix my salad dressing," replied Miss Carstairs. "Was it good? I am always careful the first day out. Oh! I must tell you about those queer Dicks, the Southerners. It seems that Lord and Lady Channel Fleet came on board at the last minute, and took quite an ordinary room—that heavy-looking red-faced man and the dowdy woman in big turquoise earrings, who sat at the captain's table—they had to have those two seats, so the Winstanleys were transferred to us. If we had only secured the Channel Fleets, we should have been so complete! Perhaps they and Clandonald don't speak, though, and the captain found it out, or the purser, who always hears all the gossip. At any rate, we've got to put up with the Winstanleys, and I'll give you my frank opinion, Helen, that before this voyage is over we'll have cause to rue the day when we laid eyes on them. The old man is simply too absurd. Treats her as if she were a princess and he her courier. How you could stand his babbling in your ear, I can't imagine. But she! she! The worst specimen of the travelling American who makes one blush for one's country when abroad." "One must own to her good looks," Helen interpolated bravely. Miss Bleecker snorted. "My dear, that is unworthy of you. A Twenty-third Street shop-girl would be ashamed to do her hair like that; and her frock—bought in stock, and fitted in half a day, probably. But even that doesn't count beside her phenomenal assurance and self-conceit. Fancy now, her addressing a remark to me, before I had spoken to her. I never heard such a string of words from a young person in my life, and to take it upon her to entertain the whole table! It really silenced me. One comfort is that everybody will put her down as I did, and sooner or later she'll be left severely to herself." "I noticed that Lord Clandonald and M. de Mariol seemed much amused, and the others couldn't keep their eyes from her," said truthful Helen, who had her own cause for blank wonderment at the further development of John Glynn's acquaintances. "Oh! that is the provoking part of men," answered Miss Bleecker, tossing her head; "give them a pretty face and a forward manner, and they'll pretend to be entertained. I'm very sorry, Helen, but if that girl doesn't take my hint and tone down a great deal, I shall be under the necessity of making a complaint about our seats. It isn't possible the line wouldn't wish to place your father's daughter at least respectably at table. These Winstanleys are, in my opinion, most suspicious people, and I have asked Mr. Vereker to make very particular inquiries and find out if I am not right. He says that when she came into the saloon, every neck on our side was stretched looking after her, and he quite agrees with me—no, Mrs. Vereker agreed with me, her husband was weak enough to say what were the odds when a girl is so deuced pretty—that there must be something wrong." The latter part of Miss Bleecker's monologue was spoken to space, since Miss Carstairs, melting away into her own room, had closed the door between them. Helen found Mlle. Eulalie sitting on the foot of the cane settee, comfortably warming her toes at a small apparatus of shining brass, which, with its red lamp inside, presented a fair semblance of the forsaken fires of home. Upon the bed lay her own satin quilt, her own pillows of embroidered linen were prepared invitingly, her peignoir billowed across the couch. Upon every side gleamed and glittered the little objects of cut-glass, tortoise-shell and gold which she had heaped in the balance against John Glynn's love, along with a hundred other manifestations of the outward and visible signs of a solvent existence. To-night she was strangely repelled by them. She made a motion to go out again into the half darkness of that same deserted lower deck, where she could walk to the rush of the wind and the inspiriting swish of the water. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts, to bid a last good-by to the love she had known for a little happy while. Then the image of Miss Posey Winstanley, with her assured smile and undaunted self-satisfaction, came to her with a new shock, and, turning back, she let Eulalie take off her dress and brush her hair, surrendering herself inertly to the warmth and perfume of materialism, and trying to think she was better so. Far into the night Helen lay, physically at rest, inhaling the pure air from her open window, feeling the gentle uplift of the sea as the huge bulk of the ship faintly answered to its impulse, listening to the bells challenging one another from afar, but she could not sleep. Tirelessly her memory went over every incident of her acquaintanceship with Glynn, and of the virtual break with her father since the terrible substitution of the woman she suspected into her old place at home. To the last she had kept a brave front, and no one should ever know what this past year had cost her. She was leaving America, without temptation to return. The secret glimmering hope that had kept alight within her, that some day John Glynn and she might come together again, was now finally extinguished. It was as if a new era of life were opening, and the question was, how best should she shape it? For the twentieth time Miss Carstairs had come around to the knottiest problem of all those that kept her wakeful in her giant cradle of the sea. She was wondering how duty and dignity might combine to inspire her action toward her successor in Glynn's affections. Her chief apprehension regarding Pamela Winstanley, was that John Glynn should have made her ever so little aware of that prior bond. A cold terror had possessed her at thought of the exuberant creature sharing or even suspecting her sacred secret. But in the girl's helter-skelter attempts at speech with every one at table, she had given no hint that she had previously heard of Miss Carstairs. Helen could only hope that Glynn's name would never come up between them. And, at this point, a soft, swabbing sound and the tread of muffled feet upon the deck beneath her window, gave notice that the sailors were at their early morning tasks. The weird, self-pitying note of the parrot in a cabin hard by seemed to grow fainter and more dreamlike. Turning wearily upon her pillows, she let sleep take her into its merciful embrace. |
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